| The day's eminent panel of speakers comprised McCann
Erickson president Santosh Desai, Double Click international product
director Ramesh Kannan, Real Media UK technology solutions director
Murly Tiwari, GroupM chairman South Asia Andre Nair and Intel Technology
Pvt Ltd director marketing South Asia Jayant Murty. The conclave also
saw two really interesting panel discussions, the first of which was
moderated by Hungama.com MD and CEO Neeraj Roy. The panel comprised
ICICI Bank head of NRI business P Gopakumar, Starcom MD India - West
and South Ravi Kiran, Apna Loan CEO Harsh Roongta, Mediaturf Worldwide
national creative director Raja Ray, Lodestar president Shashi Sinha
and Real Media UK technology solutions director Murly Tiwari. This
panel discussion was titled - 'Have your cake and eat it too? Branding
versus direct response.'
The second panel discussion addressed one of the most important
issues that worry marketers while they put their monies on the medium
of Internet for advertising. This session, moderated by Mediaturf
CEO and IOA chairman V Ramani, had panelists like IRCTC group general
manager - IT services Amitabh Pandey, Bazee.com MD Avnish Bajaj,
Citibank vice president and head (Internet, mobile and E-commerce)
Sriram Jagannathan, Grey Interactive's Sudhir Nair, Thomas Cook
India Ltd MD and CEO Ashwini Kakkar and Double Click international
product director Ramesh Kannan, who debated on the different ways
and means to measure return on investment (ROI) of Online Advertising.
Commenting on the need for an advertising conclave IOA president
Preeti Desai said, "Online advertising is dramatically underleveraged
and marketers are missing a huge strategic opportunity. IOAC aims
at convincing large traditional advertisers to spend a larger portion
of their media budgets, online. Current advertisers who are using
the Internet as a medium of communication and marketing are spending
at an average only two per cent of their entire media spend, online.
IOAC has been programmed to deliver key answers to marketers, advertisers
and agencies focusing on harnessing the interactive reach represented
by 22 million users online, 60 per cent of which, are in the 20
- 40 years age group with maximum spending power."
Ramani, on the other hand said, "This is the right time for
IOA to be commencing its activities with a conclave like this. The
market suffers from huge amounts of ignorance of how best to use
this medium for advertising and marketing products and services.
The eyeballs on the medium are catching large momentum. Suddenly,
this combination of not knowing what to do in a suddenly 'must have'
medium, gives rise to panic. The IOAC is there just to address this
gnawing concern."
An interesting day that saw some healthy debates and provided valuable
insights with staggering figures regarding the online medium in
India and worldwide.
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